IIRC this site was to get a major overhaul in the near future, so i hope this request is not too late:

Given the nature of this website, I suspect that most viewers here have sensitive eyes. I have noticed many times that I experience difficulty in reading the text on this site and judging images accompanying a piece of text. The problem appears to be that the white text lines on black background seem to produce a severe afterburn effect in my sight, and consequently when I view the images i experience a horizontal pattern overlay of dark and light linings.

So, my questions are these:

1) do other people here experience something similar?

2) what would be your preferred colorscheme?

My personal preference would be something like a medium to light gray background with darkgray text. The text blocks should have as little contrast as is reasonable without compromising readability but at the same time avoiding afterburn, and the gray background would also help judge or value published images properly.

What you are describing sounds like the Phase One Forum. For me, I have black text on a very light blue background, with no options available under the IPB Skin choices except for the default, in the menu at the bottom left of the screen. I'm on a Mac with Firefox and Safari, so I must obviously have a very different system and experience than you.

You actually have to specifically design HTML text so that it will need side to side scrolling on a 1048X768 screen. None of the guest articles require it. Just yours. Fancy telling us just what you're achieving by using a specific width for your text?

I have dark grey letters (#222) on light blue background, alternating #eef2f7 and #f5f9fd, like Ron. This is how it is in the HTML received from LL, and MSIE displays it this way. It is very good legible.

White letters on a black background is a crime against humanity. I wonder how you managed to get that. Are you using MSIE?

The website is clunky (a website tech term), hate the fonts, and colors choices are less than stunning, but, I like the logo. In the end, content trumps those issues. LL is a great resource for a bloke like me. The info provided through MR and posters on this message board is what is important, so, do what you like, just keep the content.

White letters on a black background is a crime against humanity. I wonder how you managed to get that. Are you using MSIE?

I'm talking about the main site, not the forum ldo.

If at all possible, a photography related site should NEVER use pastel tints for background colors anywhere since it strongly affects our whitebalance perception. But forum colors aren't always easily customizable, even for a webmaster, and the informational value of these forums far outweights the inconvenience of viewing a pasteltint for too long.

Having said that, i would thus also appreciate the forum colors neutralized, although i do not have a readability issue here obv.

I'm talking about the main site, not the forum ldo. If at all possible, a photography related site should NEVER use pastel tints for background colors anywhere since it strongly affects our whitebalance perception. But forum colors aren't always easily customizable, even for a webmaster, and the informational value of these forums far outweights the inconvenience of viewing a pasteltint for too long. Having said that, i would thus also appreciate the forum colors neutralized, although i do not have a readability issue here obv.

The main page is very colorful and contrasty, but quite readable on my generic Dell system with the twin 19 inch flat screens. Is it possible that some people's tweaked or customized colors are incompatible?

You actually have to specifically design HTML text so that it will need side to side scrolling on a 1048X768 screen. None of the guest articles require it. Just yours. Fancy telling us just what you're achieving by using a specific width for your text?

Nope! The width of some of the pictures is what forces the actual width. The only explicit tags I see is a left margin of 210px to accomodate the menu, plus a 700px body....

If at all possible, a photography related site should NEVER use pastel tints for background colors anywhere since it strongly affects our whitebalance perception.

Pretty sure Michael is sitting at his computer giggling about now...you can spend hours talking to him and try to convince him to go with subtle greys and more tasteful colors all to no avail. Michael is quite happy with the Luminous Landscape website and rather disinclined to make those kind of aesthetic concessions. I'm pretty sure Michael doesn't care...so while you can all wring your hands over the design and colors used on this site, I'm pretty sure the chance of things changing substantially are real darn close to zero...